I Want to Believe, but I'm not THAT Desperate
by SiFi270
Summary: Haruhi's finally found concrete proof of alien life! ...but it's just a tabloid article. How are we going to calm her down this time?


"This is it! _This_ is what we've been looking for since the very beginning!"

On its own, a very positive and encouraging statement. It's only the fact that Haruhi Suzumiya is the one saying it that turns it into the most dreadful omen I could ever imagine.

Before anyone could ask her to elaborate, she slapped a newspaper onto the table, and any thoughts that she may truly have found what she was looking for this time were soon cast aside.

"Haruhi…" I said. "This is one of those bottom-of-the-barrel tabloids. Even you know their deal, right?"

The cover story was about an alien disguised as a frog, and how someone saw the disguise falter for a moment when the frog briefly touched the pond water and short-circuited its cloaking device. I'll admit, it does seem strange that any race would master interstellar travel and still make a mistake that stupid, but then I imagined my fellow humans managing the former, and it depressed me the realize that even then we'd probably accomplish something that would make the latter seem like a stroke of genius in comparison.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day, Kyon," Haruhi said with a wink.

People do say that. But you can't just stare at a broken clock for a while and decide, 'oh it must be right now'. You still need a working clock to back it up.

Speaking of which, I doubt anybody in this room could tell time _or_ identify real aliens more reliably than Yuki Nagato, who stood from her chair after reaching a good stopping point in her book, and came over to inspect this article for herself. She wouldn't even have to say anything to hammer the last nail into this discussion's coffin. I'd known her long enough to notice and understand every minute change on her poker face. If I were to actually play poker with her… well, I still wouldn't be that confident until I'd written a whole new rulebook to account for all of her superhuman abilities.

But I digress. The point is, what little doubt there was in my mind would quickly disappear as soon as I saw the slightest hint of…

...concern?

She was worried. She was taking this seriously.

"Oh, come on guys," Haruhi actually started laughing. "Whatever it is, it can't be _that_ bad. I bet it just wants to sit there and see what kind of things happen on this planet."

So, just an observer then? If that sounded familiar to Nagato, then she didn't show it.

"So…" Koizumi, still the yes-man after all this time, prepared to take Haruhi's train of thought to its logical(?) conclusion. "If we were to find this creature, and simply request an interview… it might oblige?"

Haruhi looked disappointed in him for once. "We really shouldn't be using words like 'creature' and 'it' for these guys. It's that kind of prejudice that makes them hide from us in the first place! And if they think we want an interview, what do they think we're going to do with the answers we get? Just lock them away somewhere to read whenever we get nostalgic, or sell that information to, say, the government, or the media?"

Upon hearing such a suggestion, Nagato looked even more worried.

"We just want to have a friendly chat," Haruhi said. "Sure, we'll want to ask a few innocent questions, but we'll answer theirs too. You get a lot further by treating others as equals than you do trying to be better than them."

On its own, a very positive and encouraging statement. Actually, it still is, even from Haruhi. If only she could say things like that more often. And in a more normal context.

"As soon as it gets dark, we are heading to the pond where this happened." And there she goes again. "Tonight, we are making history!"

So you want this to go down in history, but you don't want the government or the media to know? This ought to be interesting.

* * *

As we walked towards the site of the incident that night, I finally had an opportunity to discuss this in private with Nagato, and I wasn't about to let it go to waste.

"What's got you so worried? This can't be any more than cheap tabloid nonsense, right?"

Nagato's reaction quickly told me that somehow, just by asking that, I had managed to let her down. But how? Was there some unusual detail in that story that I should have noticed, that most people would have noticed? Is that what Haruhi saw that convinced her that this was legit?

"...I am the one who wrote that article."

Oh good. So I'm not going senile, it's just… _what?!_

"Even I need to earn money somehow," she said. "And many aspiring authors begin their careers with journalism, but I was still eager to write fiction. When I considered this kind of publication, I realized that I could bring more truth into these rumors than any human, while still fabricating enough bizarre details for nobody to take it seriously. I was confident that even if Haruhi Suzumiya were to read what I had written, she would still recognize it as, in your own words, 'cheap nonsense'."

"But she believed it," Koizumi said, deciding he was now a part of this conversation. "If it were anyone other than her, there'd still be no harm done. But when your beliefs shape reality like hers do…"

"...then we might actually find an alien here," I said. "...but even that won't be so bad, right? If she thinks it's not malicious, then it probably won't be malicious."

"That was just speculation on her part," he said. "All she can be sure of is what Miss Nagato wrote. With anything beyond that, there's room for doubt."

"So we just have to make her doubt all of it then," I said.

"We may not have time," Nagato said as the sight in front of us began to match what was shown on the cover of the newspaper. We had finally reached the pond, and Haruhi and Asahina were already waiting for us, the latter of them dressed in… Oh, seriously?

"That's the frog suit we got from our part-time jobs last summer," Koizumi said casually. "Is bringing it here part of your plan?"

"I thought it might help our friend relax," Haruhi said, "because, you know, it's like we're saying 'hey look! We have something in common'!"

Or it could just be offensive, like someone pretending to be another ethnicity. But what do I know?

"So go ahead, Mikuru!" Haruhi said. "We're all here now, and that hopefully includes our amphibian friend! Why don't you say hello?"

"Um…" Asahina slowly knelt down next to a frog sitting on the lily pad closest to dry land. "...hello? ...ribbit? ...if you're there, we just want to be your friend…"

...okay, I think we've ruled out that frog in particular. Does Haruhi really want her to try addressing each and every one in this pond? At this time of night, I can't even tell how many there are.

 _YOU DARE TO MOCK ME…?_

"Did anyone else hear that?" I said, even though it was clear from Asahina nervously backing away that she did as well.

"Hey!" Haruhi said, carefree as always. "We'd like to ask you some questions, and answer some of yours too!"

 _NOBODY QUESTIONS THE AUTHORITY OF EMPEROR TIRMEK. AND EMPEROR TIRMEK ASKS NO QUESTIONS, FOR EMPEROR TIRMEK KNOWS ALL._

"So are _you_ Emperor Tirmek?" Haruhi said. "Or are you speaking on his behalf?"

Up to this point, I was taking a moment to convince myself that there was a loudspeaker behind a tree or something. A threatening voice was easy enough to handle, but it was when ripples started coming from the center of the pond that I really began to have doubts. It was enough to make all the real frogs panic and flee, but one sat perfectly still at the source of the ripples. Once it was sure it had our attention (and despite what Haruhi had said, I saw no problem with using 'it' as a pronoun in this situation) it lifted one leg and dipped it into the water, very deliberately letting us see through its disguise as the image of a frog sparked and flickered.

At this point, I found myself slightly reassured again, because whatever this all-knowing emperor turned out to be, it would still have to be something small enough to sit comfortably on a lily pad and avoid getting wet. How could it threaten us with its true form?

...the teeth were a good start. That much I couldn't deny. And the way its neck stretched like an accordion was much more unnerving than I made it sound just now. I couldn't process any details of its body when the head was approaching so rapidly, and I couldn't process much of the head's details while I was so focused on its snapping jaws. Size quickly lost all meaning once I'd realized how easily this thing could bite a huge chunk out of someone's throat if it wanted to.

Fortunately, Nagato had already carried Asahina out of harm's way, but for once it didn't look like she could do much more. This creature had been shaped by Haruhi's beliefs, and apparently, deep down, she'd expected the worst all along.

I looked her dead in the eye as we continued to back away from this creature, and I was shocked to discover that she _still_ hadn't grasped just how serious this situation was. If anything, it looked like she was trying not to laugh.

I couldn't think of any words, but I was desperately trying to think of anything I could say that could convince her, even after all this, that this wasn't really happening. This all hinged on what she believed after all. And I think at that moment, she realized that I was counting on her to get us out of this somehow.

And apparently, this was the most hilarious thing ever to her, because she could no longer hold back her laughter. She was too amused to even take another step, and my first thought was 'you idiot! It's going to get you if you stay there!'

But it didn't. It soon became apparent that the if anyone had been 'got', it was me.

The almighty Emperor Tirmek's neck had stretched as far as it could go, and was now drooping into the the pond water, which had done even more damage to this thing's body than it had to its disguise.

Why? Because Emperor Tirmek was literally made of paper. Thin triangular pieces formed its teeth, and the strip that had been its neck bore dozens of marks where it had been folded. Just like an accordion.

"So what do you think, Kyon?" Haruhi said, finally calming down. "Has Yuki's story made you a believer?"

"Wait," I said, "you knew it was her who wrote it?"

"You mean _you_ knew too? And she still got you?" She began to laugh even harder. "Yuki Nagato, you are _too good_ at this!"

"Well okay…" I had to admit defeat to save what little dignity was left. "Still though, did you really have to bring Asahina into this? You know how she gets when you're all, 'oh, there's definitely going to be a murder on this island'."

"That is precisely why we informed her of our plan in advance," Nagato said, finally reminding me that the rest of the brigade was still with us. I could see now that Asahina had an apologetic smile on her face, but the smile itself was more prominent than the apology it implied. To be fair, she had to embarrass herself quite a bit for this too. If even she found this funny, then what good would it do to protest?

"What about you?" I turned to Koizumi. "Were you told anything about this?"

He smiled his usual fake smile and shook his head. "I was in the dark, just as you were. But I did notice as soon as the disguise faded that this 'Emperor Tirmek' was a mixture of origami and ventriloquism."

Oh, sure you did.

"Yuki's really good at that!" Haruhi said proudly. "Remember when she made your cat talk for that movie we made? I knew I could count on her to provide some great effects for this."

By this point, Nagato had managed to recover all of Tirmek's components from the pond and its surrounding area, including the loudspeakers I had suspected earlier.

"So when did you find out that she was the one who wrote the article?" I said.

"Before I showed it to any of you," Haruhi said. "She came to me with it, wanted to know what I thought. I think I'm gonna work with her on later ones. She really liked what I came up with when I read this one."

"That'll be interesting to see," I said.

There was no way I could stay mad at them for this. If anything, I had to appreciate the amount of work Nagato put into it. It was one thing to orchestrate such a prank with Haruhi, but the fact that she added an extra layer to it by factoring in the whole 'we have to hide the truth from Haruhi' malarkey we're always worrying about, fooling me on a level that only a few of us could really appreciate… and to think she even faked her miniscule responses because she knew how I'd notice and interpret them… I guess it's only natural that she'd get bored every now and then. And if making the dimwitted apes on this planet dance around and panic is what it takes to amuse her, then so be it.

...it's going to take me a while, but one of these days, I'm going to have my revenge.

* * *

A/N: "hey sifi270, can you write a haruhi story without pairing yuki and mikuru"

"why would i want to"

"hahaha too late"

"noooo what is this shipless garbage. abort. abort."


End file.
